[D66] Endgame: Civilization is not and can never be sustainable. This is especially true for industrial civilization

[R.O.]

https://www.wildernessp*dc*st.com/derrick-jensen

On 08-08-2020 09:56, R.O. wrote:
> *https://derrickjensen.org/endgame/premises/*
>
> *
> *
>
> *Premise One*: Civilization is not and can never be sustainable. This 
> is especially true for industrial civilization.
>
> *Premise Two*: Traditional communities do not often voluntarily give 
> up or sell the resources on which their communities are based until 
> their communities have been destroyed. They also do not willingly 
> allow their landbases to be damaged so that other resources—gold, oil, 
> and so on—can be extracted. It follows that those who want the 
> resources will do what they can to destroy traditional communities.
>
> *Premise Three*: Our way of living—industrial civilization—is based 
> on, requires, and would collapse very quickly without persistent and 
> widespread violence.
>
> *Premise Four*: Civilization is based on a clearly defined and widely 
> accepted yet often unarticulated hierarchy. Violence done by those 
> higher on the hierarchy to those lower is nearly always invisible, 
> that is, unnoticed. When it is noticed, it is fully rationalized. 
> Violence done by those lower on the hierarchy to those higher is 
> unthinkable, and when it does occur is regarded with shock, horror, 
> and the fetishization of the victims.
>
> *Premise Five*: The property of those higher on the hierarchy is more 
> valuable than the lives of those below. It is acceptable for those 
> above to increase the amount of property they control—in everyday 
> language, to make money—by destroying or taking the lives of those 
> below. This is called production. If those below damage the property 
> of those above, those above may kill or otherwise destroy the lives of 
> those below. This is called justice.
>
> *Premise Six*: Civilization is not redeemable. This culture will not 
> undergo any sort of voluntary transformation to a sane and sustainable 
> way of living. If we do not put a halt to it, civilization will 
> continue to immiserate the vast majority of humans and to degrade the 
> planet until it (civilization, and probably the planet) collapses. The 
> effects of this degradation will continue to harm humans and nonhumans 
> for a very long time.
>
> *Premise Seven*: The longer we wait for civilization to crash—or the 
> longer we wait before we ourselves bring it down—the messier will be 
> the crash, and the worse things will be for those humans and nonhumans 
> who live during it, and for those who come after.
>
> *Premise Eight*: The needs of the natural world are more important 
> than the needs of the economic system.
>
> *Another way to put premise Eight*: Any economic or social system that 
> does not benefit the natural communities on which it is based is 
> unsustainable, immoral, and stupid. Sustainability, morality, and 
> intelligence (as well as justice) requires the dismantling of any such 
> economic or social system, or at the very least disallowing it from 
> damaging your landbase.
>
> *Premise Nine*: Although there will clearly some day be far fewer 
> humans than there are at present, there are many ways this reduction 
> in population could occur (or be achieved, depending on the passivity 
> or activity with which we choose to approach this transformation). 
> Some of these ways would be characterized by extreme violence and 
> privation: nuclear armageddon, for example, would reduce both 
> population and consumption, yet do so horrifically; the same would be 
> true for a continuation of overshoot, followed by crash. Other ways 
> could be characterized by less violence. Given the current levels of 
> violence by this culture against both humans and the natural world, 
> however, it’s not possible to speak of reductions in population and 
> consumption that do not involve violence and privation, not because 
> the reductions themselves would necessarily involve violence, but 
> because violence and privation have become the default. Yet some ways 
> of reducing population and consumption, while still violent, would 
> consist of decreasing the current levels of violence required, and 
> caused by, the (often forced) movement of resources from the poor to 
> the rich, and would of course be marked by a reduction in current 
> violence against the natural world. Personally and collectively we may 
> be able to both reduce the amount and soften the character of violence 
> that occurs during this ongoing and perhaps longterm shift. Or we may 
> not. But this much is certain: if we do not approach it actively—if we 
> do not talk about our predicament and what we are going to do about 
> it—the violence will almost undoubtedly be far more severe, the 
> privation more extreme.
>
> *Premise Ten*: The culture as a whole and most of its members are 
> insane. The culture is driven by a death urge, an urge to destroy life.
>
> *Premise Eleven*: From the beginning, this culture—civilization—has 
> been a culture of occupation.
>
> *Premise Twelve*: There are no rich people in the world, and there are 
> no poor people. There are just people. The rich may have lots of 
> pieces of green paper that many pretend are worth something—or their 
> presumed riches may be even more abstract: numbers on hard drives at 
> banks—and the poor may not. These “rich” claim they own land, and the 
> “poor” are often denied the right to make that same claim. A primary 
> purpose of the police is to enforce the delusions of those with lots 
> of pieces of green paper. Those without the green papers generally buy 
> into these delusions almost as quickly and completely as those with. 
> These delusions carry with them extreme consequences in the real world.
>
> *Premise Thirteen*: Those in power rule by force, and the sooner we 
> break ourselves of llusions to the contrary, the sooner we can at 
> least begin to make reasonable decisions about whether, when, and how 
> we are going to resist.
>
> *Premise Fourteen*: From birth on—and probably from conception, but 
> I’m not sure how I’d make the case—we are individually and 
> collectively enculturated to hate life, hate the natural world, hate 
> the wild, hate wild animals, hate women, hate children, hate our 
> bodies, hate and fear our emotions, hate ourselves. If we did not hate 
> the world, we could not allow it to be destroyed before our eyes. If 
> we did not hate ourselves, we could not allow our homes—and our 
> bodies—to be poisoned.
>
> *Premise Fifteen*: Love does not imply pacifism.
>
> *Premise Sixteen*: The material world is primary. This does not mean 
> that the spirit does not exist, nor that the material world is all 
> there is. It means that spirit mixes with flesh. It means also that 
> real world actions have real world consequences. It means we cannot 
> rely on Jesus, Santa Claus, the Great Mother, or even the Easter Bunny 
> to get us out of this mess. It means this mess really is a mess, and 
> not just the movement of God’s eyebrows. It means we have to face this 
> mess ourselves. It means that for the time we are here on 
> Earth—whether or not we end up somewhere else after we die, and 
> whether we are condemned or privileged to live here—the Earth is the 
> point. It is primary. It is our home. It is everything. It is silly to 
> think or act or be as though this world is not real and primary. It is 
> silly and pathetic to not live our lives as though our lives are real.
>
> *Premise Seventeen*: It is a mistake (or more likely, denial) to base 
> our decisions on whether actions arising from these will or won’t 
> frighten fence-sitters, or the mass of Americans.
>
> *Premise Eighteen*: Our current sense of self is no more sustainable 
> than our current use of energy or technology.
>
> *Premise Nineteen*: The culture’s problem lies above all in the belief 
> that controlling and abusing the natural world is justifiable.
>
> *Premise Twenty*: Within this culture, economics—not community 
> well-being, not morals, not ethics, not justice, not life 
> itself—drives social decisions.
>
> *Modification of Premise Twenty*: Social decisions are determined 
> primarily (and often exclusively) on the basis of whether these 
> decisions will increase the monetary fortunes of the decision-makers 
> and those they serve.
>
> *Re-modification of Premise Twenty*: Social decisions are determined 
> primarily (and often exclusively) on the basis of whether these 
> decisions will increase the power of the decision-makers and those 
> they serve.
>
> *Re-modification of Premise Twenty*: Social decisions are founded 
> primarily (and often exclusively) on the almost entirely unexamined 
> belief that the decision-makers and those they serve are entitled to 
> magnify their power and/or financial fortunes at the expense of those 
> below.
>
> *Re-modification of Premise Twenty*: If you dig to the heart of it—if 
> there were any heart left—you would find that social decisions are 
> determined primarily on the basis of how well these decisions serve 
> the ends of controlling or destroying wild nature.
>
>
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